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Chapter Twelve - Inflicting Legal Injuries

The Place of the “Two-Finger Test” in Indian Rape Law

from Part III - Inequality and/as Injury

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2018

Anne Bloom
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
David M. Engel
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Buffalo
Michael McCann
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Summary

Pratiksha Baxi chapter’s focuses on what has been popularly characterized as the “two-finger test” (clinically known as bimanual examination) in Indian rape cases. During her fieldwork in the rural District and Sessions Court in Ahmedabad, Gujarat (1996-1998), Baxi found that references to bimanual examination as a means of designating whether the rape survivor was “habituated to sexual intercourse” or “used to sex” were commonplace. The category of the habituated woman is deployed to transform a rape testimony into a statement of consensual sex. Baxi characterizes this movement as the medicalization of consent, mediated by the canonical space inhabited by medical jurisprudence textbooks, which bear the signature of scientific authority. Baxi argues that all raped victims—irrespective of age—are subjected to an invasive mimicry of the act of sexual violence via the technique of the two-finger test. This is the cost that is exacted from the raped survivor for testifying against rape.
Type
Chapter
Information
Injury and Injustice
The Cultural Politics of Harm and Redress
, pp. 267 - 292
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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